Hot to Cold-Have We Seen This Before?
By Richard Sparago on April 17, 2012, 11:00pm
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Something tells me that everyone is aware of how unseasonable warm (or hot) it was yesterday and today, with highs hitting 90 inland yesterday and in the 80s today. And believe it or not, there are frost advisories for parts of the state tonight. To take that a step further, Quincy points out in his post from earlier today that, get ready, snow is an outside possibility for early next week. All of this got me thinking about 1977, when we had some whacky weather that spring (I remember even though I was in grade school). Here's what I found:
April 22, 1977- 89 degrees in Hartford
April 23, 1977- 90 degrees in Hartford
April 24, 1977- 51 degrees in Hartford-just a little cooler!
May of 1977 continued the strange weather trend. It snowed on May 9th and 10th, and I'm not talking about flurries. Take a look at these snowfall amounts:
Boston: 0.5" (Trace on 5/9; 0.5" on 5/10)
Hartford: 1.3" (all on 5/9)
New York City: Trace (all on 5/9)
Newark: Trace (all on 5/9)
Providence: 7.0" (6.7" on 5/9; 0.3" on 5/10)
Worcester: 12.7" (11.4" on 5/9; 1.3" on 5/10)
The point is that whenever we experience abnormal weather, the talk starts about global warming, fossil fuels, etc. All of that may be true, but abnormal weather in this part of the country is not something new. Thirty-five years ago the weather was just as "abnormal" as it has been this week. One last point I've always found interesting (maybe it's what started my weather fascination). George Washington crossed the Delaware in late December. As I learned in my youth, the temperature that night was in the 50s. Maybe deviations from normal weather go back a lot father than we think.
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